playgrounds, play areas and more playgrounds!

The life of a stay at home mom in a foreign country... My life revolves around playgroups, play dates and frequenting the many parks around Kyiv. When we stay home Keenan usually wants to just watch cartoons, go next door because the neighbors have a 6 year son that also loves cars or he'll find go to the door and say "go play" while looking at me nodding his head. So with the weather as lovely as it has been, "go play" has been what we've been doing. Here's some pictures of Keenan at various playgrounds.

Playing with the Cyrillic alphabet

Last week my friend Mariska and I decided to go to "Ultramarine", a bowling alley/movie theater/bar/sushi bar, that also has two nice play areas for kids. The one play area the kids can climb way up, getting them to come down is another story however. Thankfully Keenan was only into climbing just high enough to get to the slide.
He thought this video game was pretty neat, even without putting money into it!

A few days ago Keenan really gave me quite a scare! He was in the middle of throwing a tantrum outside our apartment in the hallway while I was trying to talk to my neighbor so I picked him to take him inside when he went completely limp in my hands. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and it didn't seem like he was breathing. Now I'm panicking! What the heck just happened!? Thankfully, he came to a few seconds later and was taking big breaths of air. Either I scared him because I was panicking or the whole passing out scared him because then he just hung onto me and whimpered a little bit. I'm not completely sure if he had been holding his breath because he was mad and passed out or just crying so hard he couldn't breathe. Either way I hope he never does that one again! The nurse in me kicked in making me wonder "was it a seizure, was it cardiac related?" I didn't notice any seizure like activity or posturing so I'm pretty sure that wasn't it. Keenan had a cardiac echo was he really little because he had a slight heart murmur (which turned out to innocent) but his cardiac rhythm and heart both looked fine so I'm pretty sure that wasn't it either. So, that means he made himself pass out!

Apparently my mother used to do this all the time when she was a toddler, until that is my Grandma Betty poured cold water on her face and she was cured!

Play area fun

Tuesday, Toddler Group was cancelled at the last minute so my friend and I decided to go to the Bolshovick Mall where they have a nice play area. This outing was much needed as Keenan has a lot of energy to burn off and the weather has not been the best. Upon arriving Keenan immediately went to work running around.

Peek-a-boo!It's a very nice enclosed playground. Keenan was having lots of fun checking everything out, including the lockers...


Then he spotted the "Auto's" just outside of the play area. I gave in to his pleads of "Auto, Auto, AUTO" and let him have a ride, and then another one, and another one...



Keenan seemed to be in pure bliss, when the "auto" would stop moving he'd look at me with a slight panic and say "uh, oh!" and try pushing all the buttons to get it moving again. He especially like the merry-go-round ride where he rode a choo choo.

Yes, it was extremely hard to leave this area. Leaving meant me dragging a mid-tantrum throwing toddler up the escalator only to return a few minutes later when we all realized the food court was near the play areas. Lunch consisted of Keenan scarfing down as much as he could in 2 minutes then me dragging him back to the table every few minutes so I could eat.

All in all it was a fun outing.

Bowling

A few weeks ago Eric and I thought it would be fun to go bowling. Eric called up a few of his friends to meets us there, unfortunately we didn't have a babysitter because it was a last minute thing. The guys all assured me that everyone could take turns running after Keenan... uh huh right. That all lasted about 2 minutes. The place we went had a movie theater, a bowling alley, a bar, a restaurant and couple of play areas for kids. When we first got there I noticed a really nice big play area for the kids right next to the bowling alley and after a few minutes of me not understanding or speaking enough Russian one of Eric's friends came over to translate. Apparently the kids have to be at least 2 years old to drop off otherwise you had to stay in there with them. Uhm... doesn't that defeat the purpose of a play area? After one game of bowling and running after Keenan I decided the play area would just be much more enjoyable for both of us. We left the guys to bowling and played.

We went bowling again yesterday and this time took our babysitter so that she could play with Keenan in the play area. We thought it would be fun for Keenan to get out of the house and play with new toys while we got to bowl. Keenan definitely had fun, it was hard to pry him away from the play area when it was time to go. Ukraine might be behind on a few things but they do have it right when it comes to the play areas. There are drop off play areas for kids at the grocery store, the mall, movie theater/ bowling area and even a couple restaurants.